Benjamin Gan-Or
@ben2brain
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PhD in computational neuroscience. Hebrew University. https://t.co/epZXmo17uW Interested in the brain mechanisms underlying complex natural behaviors.
Israel
Joined December 2013
I'm thrilled to announce my publication “Cortical circuits modulate mouse social vocalizations” out now @ScienceAdvances .@mikilon @ELSCbrain @HebrewU.#Science #Research #Neuroscience. We optogenetically stimulated cortex to induce vocalizations. Sound on!
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RT @ScienceAdvances: When in #love, mice vocalize in complex ways. A new study supports the role of the anterior cingulate cortex as an i….
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A special thank you to the reviewers who requested additional experiments that yielded results surpassing our expectations. More details in the paper:
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A big and generous thank you to my advisor @mikilon, everyone in the lab for their support, and my family support network who made it all possible.
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This system can be particularly advantageous to test theories of the cortical neural code in general, considering that USVs seem to be a temporally fast and precise motor behavior.
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Taken together, I believe that research into the connection between mouse social vocal behavior and cortex will further our understanding of the brain. Especially studies to trick out the cortical code underlying vocal dynamics or acoustic properties.
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However, we hit a snag when we considered that most USV production also occurs during female social exposure to the male. To control for the USV social component, we separated social responses based on whether a USV or quiet (shown in the video) period followed.
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To illuminate whether single neurons in the ACC are modulated during USV emission, we recorded many single units with Neuropixels probes and found that single units indeed activate prior to USV onset.
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As a first approximation, we recorded from ACC using fiber photometry during USV production and found significant activation preceding vocal onset.
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In addition to electrical and optogenetic stimulation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), we also suppressed ACC activity and found that mice had suppressed USV activity.
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Male mice emit ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in the presence of females. This behavior seems temporally fast and precise, akin to human language. Human language involves Broca's area in the cortex, but what about mouse social USVs? Is the cortex even involved?
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RT @ArkarupBanerjee: Very excited to share the latest chapter in the saga of the singing mice! . Using silicon-probe recordings during free….
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Another step towards understanding fundamental properties of neural coding?.
Preserved neural population dynamics across animals performing similar behaviour #biorxiv_neursci.
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A big thank you to @mikilon and all of the lab and support that made this work possible. @ELSCbrain @HebrewU.Link to pre-print: 6/6.
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I hope this encourages further studies of social vocalization and how the cortex plays a role, especially in downstream targets. How does the brain code for temporally precise and fast motor behaviors? Maybe one day this will even further our understanding of human speech. 5/6.
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Single units respond to social exposure (female stimulus), with the resulting vocalization modulating their response. Here is an example of the same unit as above during a social exposure that didn’t result in vocalization. 4/6
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Optogenetically silencing this area leads to a disruption in vocal behavior. 3/6
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Electrically stimulating cortex can produce vocalizations, despite unhabituated head-restrained mice being silent. 2/6
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